As we approach America’s 250th birthday, patriotism is running high. Minnesota has a long history with a deep sense of patriotism. In the 1860s as the county was divided over slavery, young Minnesota men stepped up and volunteered to defend and fight for the principles the United States was established on. Local author and historian Hampton Smith tells the stories of patriotism through letters written by soldiers. FOX 9’s Randy Meier has more.

This month’s column comes to you from the People’s Pride event at Powderhorn Park, where the temperature wasn’t the only thing that was hot. I spoke with five Pridegoers about personal style evolution, where they find inspiration, and what the Twin Cities is doing right about fashion. 

Ana Evenson

How would you describe your personal style?

Thrifty and funky.

Where do you find style inspiration?

Pinterest, TikTok, friends, random people.

Where do you like to shop?

The Goodwill bins, Depop—I’m on Depop a lot—and garage sales.

What are the Twin Cities doing right in the style scene?

The creativity and people who think outside of the box. I will see stuff I haven’t seen on social media anywhere, so I think it’s really cool that people come up with their own stuff.

Has your style changed over the years? How?

Yes! I used to live in rural Wisconsin, where I was one of the only queer women there. I think that [lately] I have been more open about expressing my sexuality and gender and experimenting not only dressing hyper-feminine but masculine in some ways, too. I think that’s how it’s changed. 

What’s your go-to outfit when you feel like you have nothing to wear?

I think my comfort outfits are the ones I share with my partner. We have collective baggy sweaters that we both use, so I think those. 

How do you dress up an outfit?

I love pins, so popping some pins on. I’ve been really into ties so I’ll wear a tie over a T-shirt. Also accessories, like rings, necklaces, putting things in my hair and stuff like that. 

Tell me about your outfit today.

My partner and I have a collection of bandanas. We have pretty much every color in the rainbow, so I like to color coordinate a lot for monochrome moments. The shirt is from Etsy. The [shorts] are from Depop. I just got them because they’re kind of in style and thought they were cute. Rings are mostly thrifted, like this amethyst one which is my birthstone. I got one from a local queer market too. Glasses are from EyeBuyDirect; they have a lot of really great frames there. Socks are from my parents. And the shoes are also from Depop, I think. They have little butterflies on them which I thought was really cute. 

What style trends do you really like or dislike right now?

I feel like I will hate certain things but then I will see certain people wearing them and go, ‘Never mind, it’s just me that can’t work it.’ 

What advice do you have for dressing without fear?

I had anxiety picking my outfit out today. But you go to the place and there’s someone else that’s going to be dressing as cool as you or cooler than you. So it’s like, no one is going to remember what you wore the next day unless you want them to. I would just say to go for that. There have been outfits I’ve worn in the past that I would probably never wear today, but I’m glad I tried it because it made me more comfortable to wear something else in the future. 

Gillian Mueller, James E-T, Aya Lee

How would you describe your personal style?

E-T: Recently it’s been fruity cowboy. 

Lee: A somewhat hardcore eclectic but fun springtime girl. 

Mueller: I would say kind of a softer eclectic, movement based. 

Where do you find style inspiration? 

Lee: Pinterest is always your friend. I think a lot of the time just going shopping and looking at everything helps. I shop a lot and I try on a lot of things, all the time. I love finding and figuring out outfits for specific events. That helps me curate a theme in my mind and figure out what is going to be the most dynamic for the environment, like what’s worth moving in but also what’s exciting and fun. 

E-T: I love my phone; I’m on her all the time. Instagram and me are really tight and I see a lot of workwear, vintage clothes. If I have the energy I’ll go through a Goodwill and dig through it all. I like Japanese designers and designs, too, like Issey Miyake. 

Mueller: I’m shopping constantly, but I think for me a lot of it is just internal. I like to just see how it would look on me. But I’m also always looking at every outfit around me like, ‘Oh, I haven’t thought about putting that together!’ 

What are the Twin Cities doing right in the style scene?

Lee: I think queer people like to have fun with their fashion here. I have loved finding ways to be naked and not be naked at the same time. In Minneapolis, where we are actively making the most of the summertime, a lot of our events have this heavy emphasis on showing out with a visual aspect of our outfits. And it’s hot as fuck, which we don’t experience a lot. So I think it’s fun to experiment with what it means to wear clothes that are interesting but also not wearing clothes at all. 

Mueller: I love that there’s every single possible kind of person here so there’s so much going on all of the time. You can see every brand of outfit. 

E-T: I feel like there’s so many different subcultures that thrive here that it’s hard to have a generalized through line between those and speak to Minneapolis’s style in a broader sense. But maybe one thing is there’s a lack of pretentiousness that lives here that is exciting. I would love to see more people wearing niche Japanese designers that I like. I love the punk scene here. In the Powderhorn area specifically, there’s a lot of people leaning into simplicity but also things that are worn, lived in, and have history to them. 

Tell me about your outfit today.

E-T: Fruity cowboy is the vibe. A friend of mine works in a vintage shop and they have a lot of vintage polos and they cropped this one. I was really excited when I saw it and spent a little more than I would have liked on it. Then some Levi’s and boots. 

Lee: Today I’m wearing my NikeSKIMS Rifts [shoes], some shorts I bought for a music festival last year–they’re very tiny–and this flowy piece that I’m pretty sure is a swimsuit coverup with a bikini top under it that I got from Turnstyle. I wanted to go for something that has some sort of edge to it but I’m also venturing out with colors for the summer. I usually wear black. I don’t usually do pink so I’m getting into making colors feel a little more edgy for me. When I wear things that aren’t dark, I feel out of place or not intimidating enough. So I substituted the dark colors for attaching chains to my top and having these drop down [lace straps] from my shorts and dark shoes. And the bag with some heavy hardware. I’m just trying to harden [the outfit] up a bit while still looking sweet. 

Mueller: I feel like I’m on an opposite journey right now from a lot of color to adding more basics. I haven’t owned a pair of jean shorts in probably over five years, so we’re making a huge debut today. I will say it is too much fabric touching my skin, but I’m brave and I’m strong. I like basics, they’re fun. I’m not wearing all of my rings today but I think when the outfit is toned down it makes the jewelry pop more which is really fun.  

Connor Myrick

How would you describe your personal style?

If I’m trying to choose an outfit or giving someone advice, I’ll be like, “What feels more playful or fun?” Sometimes I’ll go for a classic look for an event. I like a vest; I think they’re funky. 

Where do you find style inspiration?

Pinterest is always a great one. People-watching at an event like this is a perfect [way to find inspiration]. You see art or you see something cool and it’s like, “I’m going to steal that.” I’ll tell all my friends that I saw someone else wearing that at a festival, but now this is my idea because I made my own piece. 

Where do you like to shop?

I don’t shop as much anymore but clothing swaps, thrift sales, and community events are great. I generally have enough clothes that I can do something else with [a piece of clothing] so I have definitely reduced how much I shop. 

What’s your go-to outfit when you feel like you have nothing to wear?

In the winter I’ll do a crewneck and a good pair of jeans. Having two pairs of jeans that you can rotate through never hurts. In summer it’s tank tops. Summer is hot, so it’s sun’s out guns out. I think in the winter it’s so focused on layering and nailing that so, in summer, it’s nice to counterbalance that and wear what I couldn’t wear in winter. 

What are the Twin Cities doing right in the style scene?

Honestly, I think it’s pretty good. I see a lot of people with clothes that they have made their own, either ripping or embellishing in some ways. I think that is the most, or best, glimpse of someone’s personal style that we could ever see. 

Tell me about your outfit today.

The Chaco [sandals] I got when I was a guide so I got them for free. These have been with me for a while; they’re great outdoors shoes. My shorts are from South Carolina years and years ago but they’ve traveled with me everywhere. They’re my go-to and my semi-cargo short. The vest is actually thrifted at a vintage shop in London on Notting Hill. It was in the back of this tall closet. I didn’t need new clothes, but when in Europe! 

What advice do you have for someone who wants to dress true to their style but is hesitant?

Wear it around the house when you’re alone. That’s how I started wearing crop tops and tank tops in general. They started as my workout clothes, then my around the house clothes, which helped because I try to dress very comfortably. 

A retrospective look meant to counter hindsight bias pertaining to the Bicentennial era, presented in the manner of Leonard Michaels (“I Would Have Saved Them If I Could”; “The Men’s Club”) and his short story “In the Fifties.“

In the seventies, my family moved to Minnesota from Vermont. I also started school that same year. That was the year everything changed for the worse. I attended six different elementary schools: two red-brick bastions of stale white bread conformity, three inner-city schools, and one school overseas.

In the seventies, I spent whole days exploring wooded and riverine areas, skating and sledding in the winter, riding my bike around the parkways and lakes ringing Minneapolis, or at the beach, where I would swim as far out as I could without the lifeguards getting mad. Given that my family put the “diss” in dysfunctional, being a free-range kid saved my sanity.

In the seventies, my mother commandeered the TV set during the summer of 1973 to watch the Watergate hearings when my brother and I wanted to watch cartoons and situation comedy reruns. We didn’t understand exactly what Nixon had done, but being deprived of entertainment gave us a tangible reason to hate him.

Because home delivery of the Sunday New York Times was not yet an option in the seventies, some of my fonder childhood memories are of going to a suburban news outlet after Sunday school at the First Unitarian Society, where my brother and I would browse the comic books and paperbacks until our mother pried us out of there or the store manager shooed us out.

Because of the 1973 and 1979 energy crises, gas tripled in price during the seventies.

The price of nearly everything increased. I look back wistfully now at my mother maintaining that Big John Baked Beans were too expensive at forty-nine cents a can.

Racist, sexist, ethnocentric and homophobic jokes became less acceptable during the seventies but were still very much a part of the culture.

Corporal punishment and shaming (especially body shaming) were regarded as acceptable parenting methods in the seventies.

In 1973, the American Psychological Association stopped categorizing homosexuality as a mental illness. However, therapists and clinicians wasted no time finding other ways of pathologizing difference. Oppositional defiant disorder, anyone?

The 1970s also saw the rise of the so-called New Right (many of them old-time reactionaries in new clothing), the growth of megachurches and increasing political clout of the religious right, exemplified by Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell.

Every other news cycle seemed to yield new scarehead articles and more unsettling stories: Killer bees, encephalitis-bearing mosquitoes, the Glensheen Mansion murders, Son of Sam, the Church Committee revelations concerning the FBI and CIA’s misdeeds; to name just a few.

Last but not least, nostalgia became a mass phenomenon in the 1970s with K-Tel’s compilation albums of bygone musical hits, movies like American Graffiti, and TV shows such as “Happy Days” which painted a picture of 1950s in roseate colors for all those yearning for a simpler place and time, or imbued with selective memories. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

We’ll get straight to the point: The financial hardships that Daily Kos is facing this year are tough.

We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet.